Truly Exotic is an original one act play written by me, Frank I. Swannack. The play is mainly set in the Elizabethan period, but features anachronistic conceits. It challenges preconceived notions of what it means to be civilised when confronted with difference. The following synopsis describes Truly Exotic in more detail:

Set in the twenty-first and sixteenth-century London, Truly Exotic blurs the differences between the civilised English and foreign savage. It begins with a merchant masquerade, a physician of time and space, who has a business plan connecting two different time periods. He transports a twenty-first century prostitute to the sixteenth-century as a wench for her ability to please men from all cultures. For, in the sixteenth-century, a courtier has unsuccessfully led an English army against the Irish rebels. He has returned from Ireland too early and now needs to placate Queen Elizabeth I. In a London tavern, the courtier learns from the wench about a lost map charting an island rich in gold. It is a prize he knows would please the queen and even make him king. With the intention of attending business matters at the River Thames, the courtier meets the merchant masquerade selling exotica from the New World. After the merchant has advertised his wares, the two men exchange tales of exploits in foreign lands. From the merchant, the courtier learns about Anthroposia: a mysterious island bountiful in gold that bears a striking similarity to the wench’s lost map. He realises the merchant holds the key to truly pleasing the queen, but can the courtier afford the price?

Truly Exotic is being performed at the 2016 Page to Stage Liverpool Festival, more details and ticket purchases are from this link. Book now to avoid disappointment.

Furthermore, the festival is hosting a double bill with another play influenced by the early modern period, The Chamber of Beheaded Queens (click on title for more details). Tickets available from Eventbrite.

Truly Exotic has its own Facebook Page. Check out the play’s official trailer here.

Following Michael Elliott’s version of King Lear, Brian Blessed creates a menacing Medieval world. Images of the full moon, Stonehenge-like stone slabs, naked flames, white-robed priests and sharp blades profilerate. He also uses a rug-like map spread on the floor. At this point, a jovial Lear (played by Blessed) enjoys Goneril’s and Regan’s flattery. He responds by dividing the map with a stick, an insignificant act if it wasn’t for Lear’s linguistic flourish that first rewards Goneril for her professed love:

Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,

With shadowy forests and with champaigns riched,

With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,

We make thee lady. (I.i, lines 63-6)

Blessed’s Lear is not a tired aged king who looks forward to relinquishing power. Instead, he is a loving though deluded father bestowing on his daughters an inheritance based on the wealth generated by bountiful land. In this context, the ‘shadowy forests’ and ‘plenteous rivers’ recall Irenius’s description of Ireland in Edmund Spenser’s A View of the State of Ireland (1595 publ. 1633):

And sure it is yet a most beautifull and sweet countrey as any is under heaven, being stored throughout with many goodly rivers, replenished with all sorts of fish most abundantly, sprinkled with many very sweet ilands and goodly lakes…(Spenser 27)

Ireland is sold to potential New Englanders as ‘a most beautifull and sweet [and profitable] countrey’, perhaps in order to justify the needless death of thousands and the cost of the ‘Irish problem’ for the Elizabethan government. Therefore, Ireland is reduced to its property value, an island to be ravaged for its resources. Although Lear already owns the land he is dividing through being its ruler, he breaks it down further into monetary units for his daughters to enjoy. Monarchical power is seemingly usurped by a landlord’s property rights. My interpretation of the map scene teased from Blessed’s film is similar to that of -Read More to avoid disappointment>

Directed by Jonathan Miller in 1982, King Lear is part of the BBC’s project to film all of Shakespeare’s plays. It is performed as though on a theatre stage with minimum props. At Lear’s court, the players are attired in black Jacobean costumes that reflect the king’s ‘darker purpose’ (I.i, line 35). Though Cordelia wears a white headdress and shawl to indicate her purity. The overall effect is that the court is aggressively banal with nasty schemes being hatched in a disturbingly calm and superficial space. Even the characters speak in the same moderate tone, a featureless wall Michael Hordern as the frustrated Lear can only rail against.

Amidst this trite behaviour, the Fool supposedly provides witty relief as he satirises Lear’s decision to handover his kingdom to his two eldest daughters. However, Frank Middlemass is a lifeless Fool who delivers his lines perfunctorily. The sharp-tongued exchanges Shakespeare wrote for the king and Fool become -Continue reading>

Early Modern Exchanges
The official blog of Early Modern Exchanges that studies the diverse cultural, historical, economic and social exchanges between England and Europe, European countries, the Old World and the New in the period 1450-1800.